


Loose ends

by Nevospitanniy



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Growing Pains, M/M, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 21:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12873444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevospitanniy/pseuds/Nevospitanniy
Summary: We’re kissing without kissingAnd we’ve got it down to a fine art





	Loose ends

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense, I wrote most of this drunk. Also I didn’t want to make Khulan a bad dude, so I just replaced him all together, sorry, Yul. Also also a shout-out to all the people who’ve used that “not a heretic but worse” line, I adore it too much. 
> 
> I know canonically Void chats leave your physical body at the shrine in a trance, but I don’t like that, so I subscribe to the idea of a temporary absorption of sorts. 
> 
> Mildly edited since publication for clarity. 
> 
> Thanks to Imogen Heap for the title and the summary.

10.

It’s true what they say: Corvo’s patience and resolve are legendary, but Void, she’s testing them both. Emily is his Empress, but also a petulant child, like any other, who moans and whines and begs for things and sweets and attention. He can’t say no to her, never could - it’s a trait she got from her mother.

Emily jokes she’ll have him exiled if he doesn’t drink tea with her in the garden, and some days Corvo wouldn’t mind. He loves her dearly, with a blind all-consuming passion of a parent, but love doesn’t buy him a good nights sleep. He, however, does.

The Outsider stands silently at his side, His perfect hair unaffected by a crippling wind blowing in the Void.

“My dear Corvo, is the peaceful life not what you imagined? Is the fresh air, devoid of the stench only a rotting flesh makes, not as sweet? No Weepers to make you feel alive?”

Hypocorism chafes at the back of his mind; Corvo wills himself to ignore it. He would ignore the Outsider entirely, if he only had a choice to.  

“She’s alive and well and will take the throne, but she is still very young. It’s difficult.”

The Outsider makes a nondescript gesture with His arm, wandering smile hiding in the corner on His lips. 

“I’m sure it is. Adulthood rarely brings the changes we so passionately wish for in our children, rather they make their inherent qualities more prominent.”

How blithely He says this, but what is tact to a demon, a wisp of smoke in a shape of a body? All Corvo sees, all he feels is rage, and Jessamine’s blood still drying on his palms, tugging at the skin like it’s due to split at the lightest touch. 

His temper splits instead. “What do you know about raising children, anyway? It is by your hand she is left without a mother.”

The words came out much harsher than he would’ve liked; not that he knows exactly how much or how little he could say, if given a chance. Corvo still holds his breath, he fully expects to be, at the very least, thrown from the Void for his flippancy, but The Outsider just blinks and shrugs.

“You are not wrong.”

Admitting fault requires some degree of awareness Corvo was unsure the Outsider possessed; He stays mute for the entire length of his visit, just staring out into Nothing, hands clasped behind His back.

He doesn’t acknowledging Corvo’s presence in any way. Their silence settles into something not quite comfortable, but not repulsive either.

Corvo wakes up with a startle and can’t remember what he dreamt about.

12.

A maid dances at Emily’s side of the table, serving her tea. She’s a new hire, a petite girl, shy in her foreignness, with cool blue eyes and a sharp nose. Her grandmother worked for Euhorn Kaldwin before her untimely death, so her mother was sent to live with next of kin to Morley as a child. Dunwall is both a new and an old home and it shows.

The Empress rolls her eyes and gently waves her away, never comfortable with the displays of servility. Too obsequious for her taste. Corvo sips from his ornate cup, unaffected - first decade at the Tower was hard, but then you get used to it, even if he still strips his own sheets.

“Why can’t they treat me like a friend?” She is frustrated, watching the maid go, tray balanced in her hands. Emily wants everyone to love her, a potentially fatal flaw Corvo is going to squeeze out of her early. 

“Because you are not. They work for you, for the Empire.”

“But I want to be.” Her mouth curls in distaste. Corvo finishes his tea and gently places the cup back onto the saucer. It’s hand painted with tiny blue whales. Tyvian.

“They are afraid of your power.” Emily stares him down from 6 feet away, molding her expression into a carefully neutral one. He continues, “you can never be friends.”

Something akin to defiance glints in her narrowed eyes. A challenge.  
Corvo’s back muscles move under his jacket, preparing for an upcoming fight that never comes. He pours more tea into his cup and downs it all in one gulp.

//

“Emily is fond of you.”

He offers His invaluable knowledge, unprompted as usual. Corvo snorts.

“I should hope so, she’s my daughter.”

The Outsider smiles toothlessly, skin stretching in an insincere display that doesn’t reach His eyes. Their surroundings seem murkier than usual, floating rock half full of rubble that Corvo vaguely recognizes but can’t place. He can’t see the whale, it seems a bad omen. 

“The young Empress though of you as a friend for so long it will take her some time to fully accept you as a father. She is unsure of what a father _does_.”

Corvo raises one eyebrow, kicking a pebble off into the Void. 

“Why do you make these things sound mutually exclusive? Can’t I be her friend _and_ her dad?”

The Outsider hums thoughtfully beside him, softly putting His index finger at the back of his unwrapped left hand. His touch feels like static.

“She is afraid of your power.”

If any of this was real, Corvo would’ve throttled Him where He stood. This is all His fault.

“I hate you,” he feels brazen and faithless, silently vowing to never visit a single shrine again. Corvo doesn’t see it, but the Outsider grins this time, black eyes shining with mirth.

The abyss swirls around them and Corvo hates it, too.

14.

He can barely remember his own teenage romantic escapades, partly because there were not that many, partly because they didn’t matter, but he regrets his poor recollection right about now, watching Emily talk to a curly haired boy he doesn’t know. His face is familiar, but his name escapes Corvo. Probably another Boyle nephew, judging by the way Esma hovers behind them, not so much a chaperone but a gossip-hungry sleuth.

Corvo squeezes his glass tighter, unsure whether he should interfere. Teenage love is fragile and fleeting as it is, she is an Empress and he is her Royal Protector, but most importantly, her father. Emily laughs; it’s too high, disingenuous. Uncomfortable. She eyes Corvo and he relaxes, toasting her with his cider.

This will be far from the last time she has to say no to a man, it’s only fair he gives her a chance to learn how to do it. It’s in Curly’s best interest to take her decision in stride.

The boy leaves with a small bow and Emily flees embarrassingly fast to Corvo’s side.

“A man that interested in whale slaughter is bad company,” she whispers, stealing his glass and conspicuously knocking back cider. Corvo doesn’t drink alcohol at times of public appearances, but Emily obviously expected something stronger, judging by her sour face. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that getting drunk is much less fun than it seems.

“Am I a better one?”

She beams with a blindingly bright smile, swatting at his arm, and Corvo thinks he can’t love her any more than he does right then.

//

He barely has the presence of a mind to disrobe, a siren call of the bed too irresistible. Corvo’s head hits the pillow in a silken case and He is already there, lying in wait.

“Let me sleep, please,” Corvo says, exhausted even in his dreams. His movements are sluggish when he lowers himself at the first step of an improvised ladder into the sky made out of floating stones. “I refuse to play your games today.” He drops his aching head into his hands.

Cold buzzing digits on his wrist pry them away; Corvo fixes his bloodshot eyes on the Outsider’s pallid face, lips a lifeless purple. A fresh corpse with more to it.

“I was under the impression you liked being here,” He seems genuinely confused and it adds uncharacteristic emotion to His otherwise dead visage. It’s deeply unsettling in ways Corvo cannot explain.

“Fuck you,” he mutters, but there’s no heat behind his words. Fingers let him go. He falls into complete darkness and wakes when the sun reaches his bed.

15.

The Outsider says He doesn’t play favorites, and yet being one has certain perks. Corvo recalls Daud’s bitterness over being abandoned, face scrunched up in childish offense, holding onto his injured side over a red coat, covered in brick dust. He ceased to be interesting enough for His attention and warned Corvo he will suffer the same fate, eventually, when the Outsider turns His cursed gaze toward someone else. That warning rings hollow when he sees the Void every time he so much as naps.

Corvo doesn’t know how the topics of their baffling discussions has shifted from the Empire to the Empress, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Emily is almost an adult and Corvo’s heart stutters every time he lays eyes on her. He feels sad and left behind, even though Emily is _right there_ and he suddenly understands Daud so acutely it hurts. 

“She is losing her need in me.” He’s fairly certain the Outsider is aware, but He still politely nods, looking devastatingly human as they sit on a bench which are a many in the Royal Garden, fountains suspended in time, water glistening in a nonexistent sun. Minutes pass, stretching into nothing.

“You’ve taught her well,” He says eventually, slowly and deliberately as if unsure whether it’s the right thing to say. Corvo hums, thinking He never bothered with that before. “It does not make you less valuable to her.”

They have an unspoken rule, but he has to be sure, just this once.

“Will she die because I’m not there for her?”

The Outsider blinks at Corvo, face just as calm as it is ever. He is deciding and His face is suddenly an open book to Corvo. The Outsider is afraid.

“There are many futures where this happens and there are many where it doesn’t. You do not want the knowledge you seem to think you need.”

“Want and need are two different things.” Corvo can feel anger bubbling just below the surface. He has a thousand threads hanging before his very nose, but he doesn’t know which one to pull.

He can’t help wondering if Daud got the same vague unhelpful replies or if it was an honor reserved for Royal Protectors only.

“You’ve taught her well,” the Outsider repeats, this time His wet sooty eyes are peering right into Corvo’s and he guesses this is as good of an answer as any.

//

The Heart beats a nervous staccato in his pocket; it started going the second he Blinked onto the roof. Corvo sighs, focusing on the small crowd beneath the balcony. He has no immediate need in another rune, but the boost they give is both useful and, well, nice. Not that he would admit that to Him.

He probably knows anyway.

Men in golden masks are chatting about something, huddled around a small bonfire to banish the biting cold of The Month of Darkness. The High Overseer would not approve, but he’s not here so they brush shoulders clad in thick wool coats in front of dancing flames, telling jokes quietly. Laughter warms them up from the inside, along with swigs they are sneaking from a flask being passed around, lifting their masks up for a second and then placing them back on.

The rhythm becomes more incessant and Corvo sucks air noisily, whipping the Heart out of his jacket and squeezing.

 _Brothers_ _spilled_ _blood_ _here_ _over_ _a_ _rune_. _Their_ _God_ _never_ _came_.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he chastises the Heart softly, making his way through a half-ruined building he perched at. Obviously condemned since The Plague Years, it’s falling apart: the uppermost floor is nearly gone, holes in the floor exposing closed apartments beneath, mouth-like and disgusting. Corvo jumps down into the closest one.

The Heart goes into a small fit when he lands on the worn tile of the kitchen, eerie purple light catching the words ‘the Outsider walks amongst us’ scribbled in black over and over on the walls. Moth-eaten old bannister lays on top of a small table, royal hue amplified by the whale oil lanterns, making it glow in the bleak darkness of an abandoned room. A rune is right there, its thin whistling sound making Corvo’s head pound the same way it always does inside the Void, oppressive and burning, like when you go too deep in the river, and you think your ears will explode. He grabs it anyway and braces for impact.

The Outsider looks exasperated, arms folded across his chest.

“Corvo, if the perspective of meeting me is so incredibly disheartening to you, we may skip the pantomime next time.”

“It’s not,” Corvo grunts, shoving the newly obtained rune in his pocket, lacking a better place; he has a chestful in the Tower, they sing him to sleep every night. He wants to smash them to pieces. “I just don’t know what- Don’t you have better things to do?”

Flickering out of existence and reappearing again a few feet closer, the Outsider tilts his head. 

“No, I do not.”

Corvo is shamelessly unprepared for an answer like this, so he panics. He lunges forward and presses his lips to the Outsider’s.

He gasps with surprise into Corvo’s mouth and pushes at his chest.

Corvo lands on his ass onto damp floor in front of a backlit shrine, gums bleeding over his teeth. A brand new rune is burning a hole in his coat, continuing with its horrible song. The Overseers laugh below and Corvo feels like they are laughing at him.

16.

Emily grows like a weed. Corvo muses during her new tailor appointment she’s in luck short pants are all the rage currently, otherwise it wouldn’t be just new shirts she’d be measured for. Her widening shoulders shrug, moving the tape. The tailor glances at Corvo, but says nothing.

“I don’t care about fashion. I mean,” she looks at Corvo through the mirror in front of her, his bored face a light spot between two dark curtains, “you dress how you’ve been dressing for years. Don’t think anyone cares, to be honest.”

16 years worth of spite in her angular gangly body.

“I’m not an empress, Empress,” he retorts and the tailor nods in agreement, re-measuring Emily’s inseam, just in case. “You need to look sharp for court.”

“Sharp like a knife,” she hisses, dramatically procuring a small blade from a hidden slit inside her belt. Corvo laughs and the poor tailor loses his ability to speak for the rest of their encounter.

Emily sheaths the knife and tucks a runaway strand of hair behind her ear. Pins sticking out of her sleeve are making her arm look like a rose stem. Their eyes meet in the mirror.

“Does _he_ like how you dress?”

This is, by all accounts, a low blow. Corvo’s jaws meet so forcefully his teeth clack; he jerks his head back into the main room, tugging curtains closed together. 

He orders a new jacket for himself as well.

//

“I like the jacket,” is the first thing the Outsider tells Corvo, when he falls out of the world, dirty and bloody, clutching a rune for dear life. “Emily was right, it suits you a lot.”

“What, you are listening in on us now?” Corvo can only wheeze after running away from the gangsters to the shrine hidden away in the back of the shop, clawing at it like it was the only drop of water in the Serkonan desert. He really doesn’t want to kill those people when the Void spits him back out.

The Outsider’s face pinches slightly.

“Only the conversations I find important. Don’t worry, your dinner talk about apricots is not that riveting.”

“Excuse you, I know everything there is to know about apricots, you could learn a thing or two. Wait, how do you know what’s important unless you listen to everything?”

The Outsider hums, unreadable expression back on.

“If I find out you spy on my daughter in the bath, I will discover a way to kill you, I swear.”

“The Empress is not the one I spy in the bath on,” the Outsider replies flatly and fizzes away. The gang, bored with their search and likely quite confused, has already left when Corvo stumbles onto the floor in front of the shrine, that dead ringing still in his ears and weirdly more breathless than when he arrived.

20.

“My father is a witch, the Abbey is getting on my tits and I haven’t had breakfast.”

Corvo stops writing and looks up from his desk. A bit loaded as far as answers to a simple “How is your day?” go, but it will do. Beckoning Emily closer with his finger, he shoves a slice of pie he didn’t have time to eat into her hands, and the Empress accepts it with gratitude and humility, sitting in the side chair and shoving the food into her mouth with an impressive but very unladylike speed.

“What is Lucas after again?”

The Abbey of the Everyman has been a persistent thorn in their side ever since Emily’s reinstatement on the throne. Too many rumors of a magical assasin in a coat to ignore.

“Their inquiry is intimately connected to the first part of my complaint, actually,” Emily points at Corvo with a spoon, crumbs flying from her lips, words barely understandable. He taught her not to eat with her mouth full, however, it seems that lesson fell through the cracks of her education, “because the High Overseer himself, as you so cleverly deduced, has paid me another delightful visit this fine morning.” Emily only becomes this verbose when very annoyed.

Corvo sighs, taking a now-empty plate from her and switching it to a glass of cider, which she downs in one jerk of the head and loudly slams it back onto the desk.

“He’s just so broken up over all the talk that is  _no doubt_ incredibly upsetting to you. Stood there, the very picture of concern, you should’ve seen him, with an Overseer on each side and a music box. A music box!” She throws her hands in the air, incredulous. “The sheer gall, the nerve he had to bring it into the Tower.”

A faint pang of nausea grips Corvo’s stomach at the memory of those boxes, their scratching noise filling his insides with shards of glass at every Abbey ceremony. High Overseer Lucas smiles right at him when they play and Corvo smiles right back, even as his eyes begin to water and his Mark burns, pulsing in time with his racing stumbling heart.

“In all fairness, if you weren’t actually a heretical piece of shit, you probably would be upset, but seeing how you _are_ and the Outsider is- well, bottom line, Dad? They can arrest you if you keep disrespecting the Abbey, and they _will_ eventually go over my head.”

Lying is frowned upon in their family, and Corvo keeps his mouth shut instead of trying to dispute or deny any of this. It’s bad enough the Outsider will definitely have something to say later, as He usually does.

“I’m not a witch,” he finds himself saying and it’s true, he’s never performed a spell in his life. Emily looks at him from the corner of her eye.

“Your words. So I put on a little play for him about how humiliating it is for you to be thought an Outsider worshipper and so on and so forth. Your presence would have definitely helped your case, but alas, you were out on the rooftops scaring birds to death or whatever it is you do.”

“What have you told him this time?”

“That you’re in your room thinking on the Seven Scriptures. Honestly, with the amount of thinking you supposedly do on those, you’re liable to publish a tractate.”

Scoffing, Corvo grabs a balled-up piece of paper off his desk and chucks it at her head. He misses.

“Here’s the first draft then.”

Emily throws it right back at him and doesn’t even have the common decency to miss as well.

//

“People of the Isles don’t call her Emily the Wise for nothing.”

The Void seems especially purple today and Corvo reminds himself to take more notes. He has long suspected its color depends on the Outsider’s mood, but he always forgets to write down any coherent thoughts after His visits. 

“Well, she didn’t get it from me, I can tell you that much.”

Jessamine’s loss feels like a broken rib, hurting only when he’s breathing. The Outsider manages something close to an apologetic face, black smoke coming from his form dissipating for a second.

“You may not recognize them, but some of Emily’s best attributes are yours. She’s smart and quick-witted and patient. Fearless, fierce, determined.” He smirks knowingly at that last one. “Merciful when possible, but decisive when needed. Kind, loyal, devoted.”

Corvo’s left hand twitches nervously. He starts to sweat in the Void chill.

“Are we still talking about Emily?”

The Outsider’s pleased face is absolutely unbearable to look at.

“Were we ever?”

22.

He’s a lover, not a fighter, Corvo likes to think, never mind how a trail of corpses over the years and no companions prove exactly the opposite. Emily, bless her heart, envisions herself a matchmaker, unsubtly introducing women she find suitable at the Tower events to him with a ferocity of a wild cat and the persistence of a storm. She all but smushes their faces together and Corvo contemplates with pain that it’s his past coming to bite him in the rear.

She doesn’t take no for an answer. She doesn’t take ‘the ghost with black eyes’ for an answer, either, otherwise Corvo would have definitely used that one. After all, who better knows his entire life story in its overly gory and vivid voyeuristic detail? She jokes about them being married, has for years now, but it’s bitter, sad. An actual nature of their relationship is a mystery to her, but mainly because Corvo can’t explain it himself. 

Privately, in his quiet moments, just before falling asleep, Corvo bets anyone who listens the Outsider is just lonely. Why He’s chosen him for the purpose of entertainment is anyone’s guess, however, and he wishes Daud was still here for a quick round of questions. What he feels is not jealously, per say, it’s hard to impose human standards onto someone who’s not, but he aches to know. Did the Outsider visit Daud every day at the height of His fascination? Did they sit for hours in the Void, watching the depth of it shift and squirm? Did they kiss?

It’s been years and He never mentioned that clumsy excuse for one. If Corvo was a vain man, he would’ve thought the Outsider values him as a friend too much to put emphasis on what was, by all definitions, a momentary lapse in judgement. But he is not a vain man, so the only conclusion he comes to is that the Outsider doesn’t care. It hurts more than he wants to admit _._

Emily has told him time after time, as both his daughter and his Empress, how this clandestine bond will get him hanged, how essentially devoting yourself to someone who doesn’t exist is foolish, how not getting married in his age as a Lord is unbecoming, and she is right. It’s not like Corvo wanted this to happen. Nobody plans for their life to become a painful and bloody affair that kills off people you love and leaves you to pick up the pieces. He’s not a girl waiting for her betrothed to come home from a long sea voyage, he knows there is nothing to wait for.

And yet he does. 

If anyone cared to ask, Corvo would say it was a gradual descent from begrudging allies to tentative friends to him ending his work days earlier and earlier to just fall asleep and end up in the Void with the oldest soul he knows while bits and pieces of history fly around in a hazy grayish sky. He would’ve been embarrassed, but he’s way too old for that.

He had been so angry with Him for so long, but he’s getting old for that, too.

The Outsider knows, of course He does, just like He knows everything else. There are a myriad of ways He can destroy his life, but He chooses not to and Corvo is boundlessly grateful for it. 

Emily lovingly calls him a heretic, but he’s so much worse. Corvo doesn’t make sacrifices or bring gifts to His shrines, no, instead he sacrificed his whole life and brought nothing but everything he had to the feet of an ageless man with eyes of darkness, without asking for anything in return. The Outsider relishes in his strangeness, his refusal to behave like men do and _want_ things. Corvo sometimes looks into His white face and catches it looking hungry, expectant. 

The Outsider wants to see Corvo pushed to the very edge and Corvo can already feel his toes hanging over the abyss.

//

Emily cries like a little girl, loudly, sniffling and rubbing her nose raw, hiccups stealing the air. Her heart is broken and, if he could, Corvo would rip out his own and put it in her chest. His Empress is in distress and his Mark roils with the need to call a swarm of plague rats under the feet of the responsible.

He rubs her shoulder instead.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I, Dad?” Her eyes are red and puffy, eyelashes stuck together. She pulls the white covers tighter around herself with just the head sticking out, looking like a fancy dessert.

“You can do everything right and still get burned.”

“I liked her, Dad, I liked her a lot.”

Corvo smiles and it’s the worst smile she’s ever seen.

“I know.”

//

“They were never meant to be together. Between all her tomorrows, only a handful end in anything but tears.”

Corvo forgets about the whale and lifts his head in disbelief.

“You’ve never volunteered information about the future before. You said we shouldn’t know.”

The Outsider frowns, the smallest movement of His brows.

“I thought it would bring Emily comfort. Or you,” His wet eyes stop on Corvo’s face and it fills him with emotions men have no names for. He wants to do something rash and stupid, like Blink off the rock into the emptiness or hurt himself or kiss Him again. He does neither, asking to be back in his bed and, if it wasn’t the trick of light, he’d say the Outsider looks disappointed.

25.

They can’t burn it. Can they?

Emily has no use for a painting of Delilah’s face, smirking on the throne, but Corvo doesn’t know how her magic worked, will it kill her or set her free. He’s not fond of either outcome.

“Yeah, yeah, just- I don’t want it in here, Dad. You understand.”

He does. Maybe it’s his imagination, but he can swear Delilah changes inside the canvas, moving from elbow to elbow and uncrossing her legs once in a while. They have prepared a room with no windows and one exit, fitted with the same ring lock like the vault, and that’s where the cursed thing will spend its days. She can waltz in there, for all he cares.

The throne room is looking better, all the vines removed and floorboard repaired. Holes in the walls are covered with wood for now, nipping cold still seeping through. Emily looks so small in her now thankfully skull-less seat, shrunk.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I don’t-“

Corvo knows how these sentences end and he doesn’t let them.

“You can. There is no one more qualified than you. You’re a great Empress.”

Her mouth twitches in a tiny smile she hopelessly tries to stifle.

“Have you told this to Mother before? That sounds rehearsed.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Emily giggles, covering her face with her hands.

“I wonder what she would’ve said about all this.”

Corvo looks over the shoulder onto Jessamine’s memorial. It’s covered in roses.

“I think she would’ve killed us for plucking out the entire Royal Garden, that’s what.”

She laughs then, loud and open, and Corvo thinks they will be all right.

//

Somewhere in between all the murder and the chaos, Corvo gained a curious habit of working the fingers of his Marked hand, seeing how his tendons dance underneath the skin, stark black lines warping and stretching. He would do this for a long time, usually over a drink taken in his chambers, alone. It was that or staring at the wall, so the choice was obvious.

This time is different, however. He has a visitor.

“You’ll tire your hand out, Corvo.” A cold voice from behind makes him drop his glass, spilling whiskey all over his trousers. The Outsider is sitting at the foot of his bed, looking around curiously, fingers rubbing the fabric of his linens. Feeling the liquid seep into his pants, Corvo makes no move to change.

“I didn’t know you could visit me like this,” he sounds rough for no reason. Without the filter of the Void light, the Outsider looks strange, his features slightly more human and also less so at the same time. Fluidity of His movements is gone, replaced by a jerky overreach of someone who hasn’t used their body in thousands of years. He is learning.

Corvo stands up from his chair and pokes the Outsider in the arm. It has the give of fabric and the thickness of muscle and bone and he doesn’t understand. The Outsider stands up too, poking his arm in response, His finger bending at the knuckle with the excessive force.

“Quite a strange display, don’t you think?” A smile looks alien on His face, but warms it to no end. The whales sing in the harbor, and His grin grows wider. “They are saying hello.”

“Hello,” says Corvo and kisses Him properly this time.


End file.
